Acis and Galatea

The 20th-century Czech artist Jiří Anderle frequently employed mezzotint among other intaglio media in his art-history–inspired prints. Either Richard Earlom’s Liber Veritatis mezzotint or a drawing by Claude Lorrain of the same subject served as the source for the tree and the central tent, as both appear similar to Claude’s original painting. Anderle printed the composition in reverse before adding the enlarged, distorted head of a menacing Cyclops on the left. The spurned lover of the nymph Galatea, the one-eyed Polyphemus appears only on a distant hill in the original. Here he looms, ready to dispose of Galatea’s preferred mate, Acis.